When the end of an optical fiber cable is connected to another cable or to other equipment, it is necessary for the cable to be spread out into individual optical fibers and for each individual optical fiber to be protected by means of a respective flexible tube in order to enable the fibers to be identified by the use of appropriately colored tubes.
Spreader heads exist for spreading out the fiber bundles of a cable, with each bundle being received in a flexible protective tube. Other spreader heads also exist for spreading out the individual optical fibers of a bundle as received in each of said flexible protective tubes.
It is thus necessary to use two different spreader heads in order to fully spread out the optical fibers of a cable.
preferred embodiments of the present invention enable an optical fiber cable to be spread out directly into individual optical fibers.
Such preferred embodiments of the present invention also make such a cable highly flexible in use during various repair and other operations which may be performed on the cable and additionally they make use of components which are common to various different sizes of cable head and to various different cable configurations, together with other components which are specially adapted to a given size of cable head or to a given cable configuration.